Great memories from Christmas past...

Whenever it comes to open-the-presents time on Christmas morning (yes, my girls still get exicted, even in their 20s), I harken back to similar mornings in the mid '60s. I hung on to the Santa dream for a while, reckoning that the sounds I heard late at night on Christmas Eve 1963 (when I heard someone experimenting with a toy machine gun I opened the next morning--talk about a politcally-incorrect gift today!) were indeed those of Santa himself.

But I always got a chuckle out of my little brother Brad, a few years later, when he was 5 or so, who had finally learned to use and dial the telephone and excitedly called up cousin Brian (who was Brad's age) to talk about their Christmas gifts.

Brian would say, "Hey, I got this ______!"

Brad would say, "Hey, I got the same thing! And I also got this _____!"

Brian would say, "Hey, I got that, too! And I also got _____!".

Brad would say, "Wow, I got that one, too!"

Right around then, I think Brad and Brian had figured out that those same gitfts were more than coincidences, that Santa's helpers were indeed my Mom and Aunt Rose, and that Santa would send them to the same store, where they naturally bought the same gifts for their youngest sons.

Though I always wondered if my Mom and Aunt Rose could have kept the mystery going a bit longer for Brad and Brian if they'd just bought different colors of the same shirt or different Hot Wheels cars for the little guys!

By the way, one of my favorite parts of holiday season is knowing that my Mom and Aunt Rose still do their Christmas shopping together...